Putin critic forged alliance with victim

Tuesday 21 November 2006 19.17 EST
First published on Tuesday 21 November 2006 19.17 EST

The name of Boris Berezovsky, the London-based Russian multimillionaire, appears at the centre of the web of intrigue surrounding the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

Mr Berezovsky, a former mathematician who became wealthy after the fall of the Soviet Union, was a member of former president Boris Yeltsin's "family". He later fell out with his protege, Vladimir Putin, and fled to the UK in 2000. Since then he has criticised the Kremlin from his powerbase in Mayfair, using Mr Litvinenko as an accomplice. They have forged links with another outcast from Russia, the Chechen separatist spokesman Akhmed Zakayev. The Kremlin has responded to Mr Berezovsky's attacks by seeking his extradition, most recently in March, when it accused him of plotting a coup against Mr Putin.

The latest connection to Mr Berezovsky came on Monday when it emerged that Mr Litvinenko may not have been poisoned during a lunch with an Italian contact, Mario Scaramella, but at a meeting in a central London hotel with two other Russians. One of the men he met was Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer who worked in the 1990s for Mr Berezovsky. Mr Lugovoi is thought to have returned to Moscow, where friends of Mr Litvinenko said he runs a private detective agency.

Mr Litvinenko's friends and family have mounted a PR campaign in the last few days, much of which through Mr Berezovsky's contacts with Lord Bell, who acts as one of his advisers. Lord Bell said yesterday: "I am an adviser to Mr Berezovsky and Alex Goldfarb [a close friend of Mr Litvinenko] asked if we could help. We did so willingly. We are doing it all for free."